


While You Were Gone

by AFishNamedSushi



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Non-con doesn't apply to main characters, Pining Sherlock Holmes, Post-Reichenbach, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:48:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25102693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AFishNamedSushi/pseuds/AFishNamedSushi
Summary: “See, Sherlock, this is what you could never get through your thick skull,” John says. He sounds angry and frustrated and so, so familiar. “The drugs. You tell yourself they make you brilliant – no shut up, more brilliant, okay, fine. That they help you make connections where others miss them. But here you are, high off your arse and missing what’s right in front of you.”I see you, Sherlock wants to say. But he knows this is not the right answer.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 59





	While You Were Gone

**Author's Note:**

> See the chapter end notes for more in-depth descriptions of the tags if needed (will be spoilery). 
> 
> I envision this takes place after S2 when Sherlock is on the run, and if you squint can also take place in the same universe as my other story Lie To Me. It's an emotional one, folks.

Bulgaria in the summer. 23 degrees; pine trees case their shadows on sun dappled, sprawling lawns in Yuzhen park. Birds sing their songs, melodies eclipsed by the always present undercurrent of far off traffic.

On the pavement outside a flat in _zhk Gotse Delchev,_ a man stands and smokes a cigarette.

Inside the flat are two sons of an SIC éminence grise, one’s wife, and the other’s girlfriend. Both men are accomplished killers with several murders to their name, foul tempered and prone to unpredictable fits of violence.

One of these brothers is also in possession of a memory stick containing the only available CCTV footage showing the broad-daylight assassination of an anti-corruption politician. The killer is a gun-for-hire, one of many flies tangled in the web of a particularly nasty spider, dancing to a tune plucked nearly two-thousand miles away. Unless the killer is identified, he is set to assassinate another politician within 48 hours. Such an event would serve to set back years of progress in cleaning up the corrupt Bulgarian government, paving the way for further regional destabilization.

The man standing on the pavement takes a deep drag of his cigarette. His dark hair hangs in long, limp curls around his face; his beard is rough and unkempt, and his thin, lean body has the look of a rangy wild panther. He is underfed and under-slept, riding the last vestiges of a cocaine high of quite poor quality. He has until today’s sun goes down to somehow acquire the memory stick - kept currently on the person of the youngest brother - leave it in a dead-drop location all the way in Kostinbrod, pick up a new file, a new lead, and begin the process all over again.

This is just another day in the life of Sherlock Holmes since the Fall.

He stubs out his cigarette, crushes it beneath the heel of a large dirty black boot, and goes inside the flat.

They arrived there earlier that morning. Sherlock has been working for months to integrate himself into the Tsvetkov brothers’ good graces, to be allowed to accompany them to the _zhk Gotse Delchev_ safehouse and stay with them while they wait for a trusted SIC contact to come and retrieve the footage. The waiting has been like the long, slow diminuendo of a symphony; his hands practically ache from tuning the strings, and anticipation has curled itself a ball in his belly and set his nerves aflame. His fingers itch, tensing as they near the crescendo: the final violent, climactic, loud finale.

Then, the silence.

This is technically Mihael’s apartment, one of many he has stashed all over Sofia, and like the man himself it is all about taste with little care for substance. There are large modern art prints hanging on the walls of the sitting room, incomprehensible swirls of colour; two leather sofas; laminate countertops and dark panelled wooden cabinets that give the place a very catalogue feel. Only a few of rooms see any action on the regular: the kitchen sees the leas, the sitting room the most. A little round table is the central fixture – flattened treads from a habitual walking path, the cleaning lady doesn’t even move it when she vacuums, you can tell by the indents under the feet, they’re worn into the carpet. The leather sofas are expensive and collapsible, meant to be easy to add and remove for company, however the extra seat is rarely used, is usually stored in one of the two bedrooms unless there’s company present, which there never is. Only one of largest of the bedrooms has an actual bed, though it’s rarely used for sleeping.

The others are sitting on the larger sofa, leaving the smaller armchair open for Sherlock to fling himself into. Anton is using a credit card to portion out little lines of cocaine on the table while his wife snorts it using a plastic straw. Mihael is absently playing with the hem of his girlfriend’s dress. She looks distinctly uncomfortable, perched on the arm of the sofa with one of his big, meaty arms flung around her waist. The strap of her dress hangs off one skinny shoulder.

Sherlock runs is fingers through his hair – greasy, needs a wash – his knees jittering up and down, up and down, as he tries to _think_.

He is all at once so exhausted he can hardly keep his eyes open and terrified of closing them, afraid that if he does he may never wake up. This is the matter, one of many, that his brother and all the rest could never get through limited little minds: not all substances are created equal. Hypocrites, the lot of them. So eager to sit and sip their Glenlivt out of crystal glasses whilst presuming to lecture Sherlock on the merits of sobriety _._

He scoffs to himself. As if he does not _know_ , as if he had not _perfected_ it. Did none of them understand that was never about the drugs but about the _balance?_ Like any good application of science and logic, it was about the cause and effect of materials in certain doses. Medicine. Just the right amount and it makes all the difference.

And God, if he could only go back to that, just for one minute. It would clear all this up, would make the path forward so clear, he could see the next step like footprints on the floor, go there, say this, look here -

“Stefan”, Anton calls.

Sherlock looks up reflexively. He primed himself early to respond to his alias, trained himself like a dog at the dinner bell to avoid arousing suspicion.

“Come, hang with us. Indulge yourself.”

He complies. He watches the scene unfold in a detached sort of way. His arm, pale and skinny, sores pronounced more now than they have been in quite a while _–_ it’s the weather, lends itself to short sleeves, his Belstaff would look ridiculous here, everyone wears polo shirts- reaches forward and accepts the small plate of white powder that Anton passes his way. He snorts it, feels it connect like a livewire directly to his brain.

It hurts.

Someone is playing music outside, some electronic garbage that grates on his nerves like cold air on an exposed tooth. It mingles with the sounds of sniffing. Sherlock takes another bump. He learned early on that in the presence of the Tsvetkov brothers, everyone partakes. Everyone indulges. 

Time passes slowly and in an instant. When he comes back to himself – minutes later? hours? – Anton and his wife have begun to kiss, slowly at first, but soon they fall into a languid rhythm, their bodies twisting together in an amorous sprawl that eats up two-thirds of the sofa. Anton begins to part the folds of his wife’s low-cut dress. He reaches inside with one big hand to fondle her breast and she squirms. Less than a foot away, Mihael seems oblivious. His girlfriend shifts uncomfortably – embarrassed, aroused, hard to tell, he was never good at telling the difference anyway _._ Emotions are like overripe cheese, offensive and overwhelming on the palate. Not his area.

It’s moments like this when Sherlock misses him like a limb; misses him like he misses his violin and shortbread biscuits and Ms Hudson’s cup of tea. He would hesitate to call it _sentiment_ , but in truth could not put up much of an argument if one were to suggest he had grown _attached –_

Sherlock looks up and his heart stops. John is standing there.

Well, no, obviously not. Not _really._ John is in London.

Sherlock isn’t as privy the goings on of things as he once was, but he knows, _knows,_ that if John had somehow, for some reason left London that he would know it. This is just a trick. An error in software brought about by the truly terrible quality of cocaine. The synapses firing in his brain, increases in dopamine have activated his rewards center _,_ have all coalesced to show him John standing behind the large sofa and peering out the window. He is wearing jeans and that terrible cream jumper that washes out his complexion, that reduces the deep blue ocean depths of his eyes to shallow pools. Surface John, carboard cutout John, so one-dimensional.

Somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind, Sherlock has latched onto this impression of John, printed him out like an image on tracing paper and let him slip through doors which are shut less firmly than usual, is holding him up to the light and watches the sun fade him in and out.

But oh, what a trick it is. He really looks as if he is here. He is material. He moves. The sun tinges the dirty blonde of his hair into a bright white, his jaw is set into a firm line as he looks out the window. This is serious-John, the ‘I’m standing in the middle of somebody’s living room and yet I may as well be in the middle of a warzone-John.’

For reasons that are quite unclear to him, Sherlock feels betrayed.

He’s spent quite a bit of time making out a space especially for all these Johns in his mind palace, had rendered it with meticulous detail to match the sitting area of Baker Street. It has been a comfort of sorts to know that should he ever require him there he would be, sitting cross legged in his chair, a newspaper in hand. The fact that Sherlock can see him now is terrifying, just a bit. It’s a sign that his grip on reality is growing tenuous. It undermines his control, and control is what Sherlock aims to maintain in all things, always. His mind is his greatest asset, after all. This is a sign that he is slipping, and he cannot afford to slip up right now.

“You have beautiful eyes.”

Sherlock tears his eyes away from the vision of John. Reluctantly.

Mihael is staring at him. He mirrors Sherlock’s languid sprawl, knees spread wide, one hand balanced on his knee. The hand that isn’t wrapped around his girlfriend’s waist - wrapped, wrapped, more like trapped, the fabric in bunched, his grip is hard to keep her there _–_ is settled on his leg. His fingers are tapping a relentless beat. Tension, anxiety, the drugs, too many possibilities. But his gaze. It is boring into Sherlock. Mihael’s girlfriend (her name, what was her name? Sherlock doesn’t remember though he’s sure he was told, judged it irrelevant at the time) is looking off into the distance with a vacant expression. There are big, dark bruises on the insides of her thighs.

“What?” his voice is like a car crash victim, dragged kicking and screaming out of his chest.

He’s spoken in English. Shit.

“They are the most extraordinary colour,” Mihael says. He doesn’t seem to have noticed Sherlock’s slip. Or cared. “How do you say, they are…blue?”

“No.”

A short, sharp nasty bark of a laugh. Anton has pulled his mouth away from his wife’s chest long enough to cast an inebriated but forceful punch at his brother’s arm.

“Stop flirting, Mihael. Is not nice to flirt. What about poor Yana?”

Mihael makes no response. His mood changes itself in his eyes, the way they become full of hatred and anger.

“She is beautiful girl,” Anton continues dispassionately. “She is lonely though, I think. You never pay her any attention anymore since Stefan came to us. Are you lonely, Yana?”

Yana remains slumped against Mihael’s side and doesn’t respond, though her fingers twitch where they rest in her lap. Her hair is hanging heavy in front of her face, obscuring her eyes from view.

Anton’s wife starts to giggle. It sounds like a hyena laughing, high, manic and completely unhinged.

Anton continues speaking to Sherlock, though his eyes never leave Mihael.

“You are good friend to us, Stefan, these many months. You are loyal. You are quiet. You do not cause trouble.”

Sherlock sniffs. His gums ache.

“You remember, Mihael, how Stefan saved us from that _pederuga_ Yermolayevich? He try to rob us and Stefan shot him, right in the head! BAM!”

One of Mycroft’s minions, undercover, a set-up of a bad job of dealing counterfeit RPK-74M’s, meant to establish his cover. Fake bullet, fake blood pack, fake drugs, fake fake fake fake –

“A good man, Stefan is. A good dog.”

“I think you might be bitter,” Anton’s wife says matter-of-factly in a nasally sort of voice. Her eyes are so red their natural brown is barely visible. “No money? No girlfriend? Not even a _mrusna kurventiq?_ ”

Filthy whore.

“I don’t ask for reward,” Sherlock says. The Bulgarian feels unwieldy on his tongue, all harsh consonants, like trying to chew pointy-edged crisps with a dry mouth and no water. “I only ask for opportunity to prove myself.”

“Opportunity.” This is Mihael. His breathing has gone shallow.

Sherlock knows suddenly, like he knows chemistry and London’s seedy underbelly, that Mihael is erect under his trousers.

Sherlock can’t help it. His eyes seek out John again.

John has moved away from the window and come to stand behind the brothers. His hands are in his pockets, broad shoulders hunched forward in a posture of casual strength. He’s got that crooked little smile on his face. So heartbreakingly familiar even after all this time.

And what does it _mean_? There are too many variables, and this is not the real John. That smile will not mean anything more than Sherlocks’ subconscious trying to tell him something. Trying to drive him towards some conclusion. The clock is ticking.

“How did you know they were fake, Stefan?” Mihael asks.

Know what was fake?

Oh, the guns. Plastic finish, lackluster shine, crudely shaped pivot pins -

“Obvious.” It shoots out of his mouth like a reflex. He amends, “they did not look like real guns.”

“Nobody saw that. Except for you.” Mihael lets go of his iron grip on Yana long enough to take another hit. The cocaine pile is severely dwindled. Even though it really is crap stuff, Sherlock feels a pang of regret that it’s almost gone now.

“I notice things too.”

“Do you?”

“I am smart man. Smarter than most,” Mihael insists.

“Sounds familiar,” John says. The sound of his voice is like sinking down into a warm, hot bath. Sherlock closes his eyes against it, helpless.

“You do not have girlfriend.”

Sherlock swallows. He has a distinctly uncomfortable feeling he knows where this is going.

“No.”

Mihael is staring very intently into Sherlock’s face. His gaze is glassy and slightly unfocused.

Sherlock has no answer, none that will sound reasonable at any rate. Not to a man whose female companions are as easily acquired as a new toothbrush. The dossier on the Tsvetkovs did not mention their involvement in anything like human trafficking, but the broader SIC certainly dabbles.

“A man like you…”

John’s smile has slipped, his expression hard as stone now.

Mihael takes a deep, startling breath in. He does not even glance at the couple practically in mid-coitus next to him. “You should try it. I think you will like it. I think you will be _good_ at it.” His eyes rove over Sherlock’s body. “I am good at it. Right, Yana?” He gives his girlfriend a rough shake. She nods her head obediently. “You are skinny. Yana is skinny. She is like you.”

Silence descends.

Sherlock’s fingers drum on the arms of the chair faster than he can count the rhythm. He’d like to catalogue them; he always did come up with the best compositions in the heat of the moment, under fire, under duress, his heart pounding in his ears, John next to him, breathing hard –

“Sherlock,” John snaps.

Sherlock flinches. John dips his head towards Mihael.

“Pay attention, idiot.”

I always pay attention.

Except when you don’t _._ Except when it’s something outside your purvue, except when it’s something to do with human social norms, and emotions and _feelings_.

“I will give you this because I am generous,” Mihael is saying. Sherlock looks up just in time to see Yana, towering on skinny legs and six-inch heels like a newborn foal. Mihael shoves her in the back and she stumbles forward, barely missing the table and landing with a hard thump in Sherlock’s lap. His arms come up reflexively, to shove her away or hold her he isn’t immediately sure. Her head is close enough that he must crane his neck down to look at her. Her eyes are squeezed shut.

Mihael’s cheeks are flushed, his pupils dilated.

“Go to the bedroom,” he says. Commands. “Now.”

Sherlock lets himself be pulled to his feet and taken down the hall. He can feel Mihael’s eyes – _John’s_ eyes – on his back the whole way.

Inside the bedroom is just as nondescript and modern-cliché bland as the sitting room. The lack of furnishings puts all the attention on the bed, which is made up with a garish red quilt. It has the vibe of an action sequence about to unfold, blood sacrifice on an altar.

Yana lets go of his arm the minute they are through the door and sits on the edge of the mattress. Sherlock swallows and turns around.

Thank God, John is here to. He is standing beside the bed with his arms crossed, looking down at Yana with a considering expression.

Sherlock paces.

Yana opens her mouth to speak.

“Don’t,” he interrupts. “Just don’t say anything. I need to…I need to…”

Sherlock takes a deep breath and feels each one rattle his ribs on the way out. There _has_ to be a way out of this.

“You’re not going to…”

His eyes snap open. John followed them inside (thank _God_ ) and is giving him a Look.

He stops pacing. “I’m not going to what?”

John expression is exasperated. He sighs, like he can’t believe he has to say it aloud. “You’re not going to sleep with her, are you?”

Sherlock is more shocked by this than he ought to be, seeing as its his hallucination that’s asked him the question. He scoffs.

“Be serious, John. I realize that you yourself cannot pass up the opportunity to sleep with every woman who presents herself, but some of us are beyond such primitive urges.”

“Oh yeah, you’re controlling your urges just find. I can tell.”

“Circumstances outside of my control -”

“And what do you call this then, Sherlock? Is this you in control?” John narrows his eyes. “Because it doesn’t look that way to me.”

Sherlock says nothing. He flings himself dramatically onto the bed. Yana startles but does not otherwise move. It’s another minute before he realizes that she is shaking.

He is reminded suddenly of a tiny dog; a small, trembling creature who is constantly shivering, afraid of everything larger than its own shadow.

“Wrong,” John – no, not-John, he isn’t really _here_ , says.

Sherlock slits one eye open to glare at him.

“Excuse me?”

“Look again.” Not-John inclines his head at Yana.

“She’s clearly terrified.” And who could blame her? Trapped in a room with a stranger, put there by a man who abuses her.

“Is she?”

Sherlock sighs, petulantly.

“John…”

“See, Sherlock, this is what you could never get through your thick skull,” John says. He sounds angry and frustrated and so, so familiar. “The drugs. You tell yourself they make you brilliant – no shut up, _more_ brilliant, okay, fine. That they help you make connections where others miss them. But here you are, high off your arse and missing what’s right in front of you.”

I see you, Sherlock wants to say. But he knows this is not the right answer.

He swallows tightly and turns his head to the side. Yana, obviously. The only other person who is in this room for real.

“As I said, John, she’s frightened.” Thin arms wrapped around her chest, head bowed, legs crossed tight. When he turned his head towards her, she flinched slightly. Her breathing has gone shallow.

“Stubborn git,” John huffs under his breath.

Sherlock’s mouth turns up in a small smile.

He has lost it now, hasn’t he? But oh, it feels so _good_. The banter, the arguing back and forth. He truly has missed this, more than he ever thought he might.

Ah, John. My John. Even in my mind and a thousand miles away you insist on appealing to my emotional intellect.

An oxymoron if there ever was one.

Of course, as is always the case where John is concerned, merely considering the possibility of interpreting the data in a different way leads to a surprising result. Thoughts begin to surface like gossamer threads appearing out of thin air, drawing conclusions faster than he can voice them aloud.

“She _is_ afraid,” he says. “Not just afraid, though. She is angry. Furious.”

Spitting mad, muscles coiled like a viper ready to strike. Less a small dog and more a feral cat, backed into the corner of a cage.

Though he never asked, Sherlock always suspected that John is intimately familiar with this particular brand of helpless rage. The kind that suffuses one’s whole being with a strength that might allow them to float high above their enemies and smite them. But then, of course, the cruel reminders of reality sets in.

Like recognizes like, eh John?

“Why would she be angry with me?” he wonders. “I’ve done nothing to her.”

He allows the lack of response to speak its volume. He supposes it was a rather stupid question. 

Sherlock considers. The cocaine is still swimming in his blood, but it feels less like a bad fog than before. Not quite the bloody footprints-on-the-floor level of clarity he was hoping for, but at least he has a plan of action now. Something approaching it at any rate.

The sun is high in the sky outside the window, and it will not be that way for very much longer.

“What is your name,” he asks Yana in thick, slurry Bulgarian.

Her head whips around fast. One of her eyes is swollen almost to the point of being fully shut and the other is a shade of pale blue that looks almost translucent in the sunlight. She won’t answer him because she doesn’t yet trust that this isn’t a trick, isn’t some game meant to torment her further.

Sherlock sighs.

“You are not from here,” he tell hers. “You’re Slovenian. You were born in Raka but your family moved to Radeče when you were young. You’re an only child. Your father worked as a mechanic and you helped him with repairs until you went away to school.”

Privately, though probably not as much as humility should allow, Sherlock savors her shocked expression. John is wearing that simultaneously pained-and-impressed look he never tires of. He feels buoyed by it and takes pity on her.

“As a child your hands would be small enough to hold a spanner in hard to reach places. Your wrists bear the faint but distinct marking of chemical burns. You see there is a distinct difference to the effect that battery acid will have on skin, I once wrote an entire…”

He stops.

“Anyway. You’re not from here.”

Silence falls. After several long seconds, Yana speaks.

“Milan.”

“Pardon?”

“Milan.” Her voice is surprisingly mature for someone so slight. Based on her appearance, Sherlock had expected a childish tenor. “They said I would be a model.”

John makes a disgusted noise.

Sherlock takes her in, sees beyond the bruises and the malnourishment. He imagines she would be quite striking under different circumstances in a rather boyish, androgynous way that is all the rage these days.

“You could be,” he tells her sincerely.

She says nothing but the disbelief is palpable.

“You are not from here either,” she says, surprising him.

“Oh? How can you tell?”

“Your Bulgarian is good, but you say things that do not fit. Things that…” She pauses, brow furrowing. “Your slang is not right. You are too formal,” she says in heavily accented but accurate English.

John seems to find this quite funny for some reason. He snickers. “Well done, you. The great master of disguise caught out by a teenager.”

“In my defense,” Sherlock tells him hotly. “I only had a week to learn it.”

It occurs to Sherlock then that there is something else about Yana that does not quite fit with the frightened-child theory he’d been harboring, uncanny ability to parse accents aside. The way she watches him, her gaze never faltering. She’s calmed slightly now that she doesn’t perceive him as an immediate risk, but she hasn’t let her guard down entirely. She is smart, and there is simply too much awareness in that one eye of hers. The placidity beneath the storm, a calculation, the gleam that comes from the fervent dedication of one who is committed to –

Oh.

 _Oh._ That’s brilliant. Why is that brilliant? Then on the heels of that, the knowledge that he can use this – but how can he use this? It will need to be done perfectly, and if it can be done right it will be better than he could ever have anticipated. John – real John, he cannot say about this not-John – would never approve. But he isn’t here, he’s safe in London and Sherlock needs to be gone by nightfall to keep him so.

Sherlock sits up and turns to face Yana. They are almost of a height, sitting like this.

“You’ve been planning to kill him for a long time.”

He will admit to being slightly impressed that she does not deny it. When she continues to stay silent and simply stare at him, hardly blinking, his intrigue grows.

“Do you have a plan for how you’re going to do it?”

Yana says nothing, but the subtle tightening in her jaw is answer enough. He imagines she has played through several scenarios in her mind, weighed them each in turn and dismissed some out of hand. Given the severity of his crimes against her, it’s likely she’s latched onto one of great violence. Not some simpering poisoner, this girl. She’s envisioned one which will cause him great suffering, that that will coalesce with her standing over him in his final moments as he watches helplessly, succumbing to death and seeing that she is the one who sent him there.

Unfortunately, however, such scenarios are unlikely to come to fruition. Not today, not while there are just hours left before the brothers and the memory stick are gone.

“Christ, he’ll kill her,” John says. He rubs a hand wearily over his face. “He outweighs her by a good three stone at least. She’ll never be able to take him head-on and get away with it.”

“She won’t be taking him head-on,” Sherlock corrects.

“She won’t?”

“No.”

He will not tell her that he understands why she wants to do this. Such a statement would be exceedingly pedestrian and unnecessarily sentimental. The kind of thing John might do, like he wants to sit with people who come to their flat, to pat the hands and offer tea to those who tell their sad stories whilst Sherlock sits there gnashing his teeth and resisting the urge to bite his nails and urging them like thunder to get to the bloody _point_.

Though her rage is like John’s her mind is like Sherlock’s. She _can_ do this, and he will tell her how.

“In an hour or so when Anton is finished…finished, with his wife, he and Mihael will get into an argument about football and Anton will leave. Mihael is high and in a foul temper so he will stay here. He’ll be wanting to take it out on someone and will consider getting up and coming in here to find you, but will at that point succumb to the exhaustion and massive amount of cocaine and alcohol in his system. It takes the average man hours to come down from a cocaine high. Mihael is larger than average and has a high tolerance, but he is pre-diabetic and hasn’t eaten anything of substance at all today. He’ll turn on the television and fall asleep.”

Sherlock pauses to make sure Yana is taking this in. She listens raptly.

“When you leave the room be sure to take off your shoes. Walk to the kitchen and grab a knife from the wooden block on the counter. Don’t grab a big one, you’re too small to wield it properly. Grab the paring knife. Walk up behind him and take him by the fringe, like this.”

Sherlock fists his hand in his own hair and pulls his head back tight, exposing his long pale throat.

“Keep your grip firm and life his neck up high. This exposes the – the -”

“Carotid artery.” This from John.

“Carotid artery, yes. The skin is thinner there than you might think. Once you start the process you must not stop. Do it quickly, and do it hard. There will be a lot of blood so stand behind the sofa if possible, so you don’t get sprayed. Do not hesitate.”

“She won’t,” John says quietly.

She won’t. Sherlock can tell that much by how she is reacting. Another man might feel quite differently in the face of a young woman in such a terrible position, but Sherlock has always thought that pity is possibly the most useless of emotions. He always rather favored action. 

“What after,” Yana asks after a long moment. “What do I do after I kill him?”

Sherlock takes a deep breath in through his nose and lets it out slow.

“After,” he says, rolling it around on his tongue. “After, I will help you escape this place.”

They wait for what feels like forever, Yana and Sherlock sitting side by side on the gaudy quilt while the sun sinks ever lower on the horizon. Sherlock is a tall man but not a large one, especially after almost a year on the run, and the drug haze has almost receded entirely by the time they hear raised voices from the sitting room, followed not long thereafter by the sound of the door slamming. Something heavy crashes into the wall – a thrown beer bottle, most likely – and then the television clicks on at an alarmingly loud volume.

Yana closes her eye. Her fingers have dug little grooves into the quilt, little gouges like wounds. She looks at Sherlock and he nods.

When she’s left the room and closed the door quietly behind her, he lets himself slump over and fall backward on the bed. He stares at the ceiling.

“Do you think she can do this?” John asks. He’s been silent this whole time, a static figure in the corner of the room.

“You tell me.”

John is silent for a long moment.

“I think she’ll do it perfectly.”

There’s no way for him to read into that, so Sherlock won’t. He won’t. He’ll lie here and wait for the plan to come to fruition because it will. He knows that for a fact, and yet there is not the usual sense of satisfaction that comes along with it. He was never any good without an audience, and if he is being honest with himself, he’s never been at his best than when he was playing for an audience of one.

“You’re not here,” he says. He closes his eyes tightly because it hurts to admit something so fundamentally true.

“No, I’m not,” John agrees. “Because if I were, you wouldn’t be here either. You wouldn’t be high as a kite. You wouldn’t be skin and bones and track marks, and you wouldn’t have just provided a teenage girl with a tutorial on how to murder a man with a stolen knife. There’s no way I would let you do any of this, not while I was there to stop it.”

“It’s the only way,” Sherlock whispers. He says this and it means everything: ‘it’ is this mission, ‘it’ is Moriarty and the Fall and doing whatever it takes to protect the people who mean the very most to him in this world.

I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

This John is a figment of Sherlock’s imagination, but he wouldn’t be a John of any sort if he didn’t so something surprising. To retain some inherent sense of ‘John-ness’.

He comes to sit beside Sherlock on the bed. Their hands are separated by mere inches.

“It could have been different.”

Sherlock looks up at not-John through his too-long hair. He thinks about Baker Street, about two chairs and Union Jack throw pillows and foyer hallway upstairs downstairs. He thinks about experiments in the kitchen and toast with jam that is only edible when John makes it and is like swallowing ashes, otherwise. He does not think about his body and how much it aches, about how he’s in so much pain without the drugs to keep him going that it’s hard to wake up, how he is no better than a wind-up toy and it’s all he can do some days to wind himself up and let himself loose in the right direction.

It was worth it. To never see John again except like this, to keep him safe.

John says nothing for a long time. Then his hand reaches out and rests on top of Sherlock’s.

Tears start to gather in the corner of his eyes because he can’t feel it. John’s hand is on his arm, and he can’t feel it.

John lays down beside him.

“So many things could have been different,” he whispers. “Do you know that? Do you have any idea what we’ve lost?”

Silent tears run down Sherlock’s cheeks.

“No,” he admits. The possibilities are endless, aren’t they? The gulf between what is and what might have been can swallow the world. “But I would have liked to have found out.”

He lies on his back and stares at the ceiling for another fifteen minutes or so. Then he hears a small sound from beyond the door and knows its time to go. He forcefully rubs his forehead and lets out a long, slow breath.

John is gone when he opens his eyes.

The television is still blaring in the sitting room. The first thing he sees is Mihael’s back and upper shoulders, head slumped in a posture of rest. At first glance he looks asleep. Standing in front of him though, Sherlock sees that his entire front is drenched in blood. His head hangs heavily against this chest. There’s a trail of blood that’s made its way down his arm and is dripping onto the floor.

Sherlock’s hands shake as he gingerly removes the memory stick from Michael’s pocket. 

Yana is waiting for him in the kitchen, drying her hands with a cloth towel. She’s kept kept the knife on her person, hidden it away inside the folds of her dress, and aside from a red spot on her collarbone looks otherwise clean. She’s holding her shoes in one hand and set of car keys in the other.

“We won’t be needing those,” Sherlock says.

“We won’t?”

He walks by her to kitchen counter and tears off the corner of an old takeaway advert. Some rummaging in a drawer unearths a pen, which he then uses to scribble a phone number on the page. She sets the car keys down and cautiously accepts the bit of paper from him.

“There’s a bus station two blocks from here,” he tells her. “Take the next one to Vratsa. It’s a three hour ride but should get you there not too far after nightfall. There may or may not be a phone box and if not you’ll need to ask someone to borrow their mobile. Call this number,” he points at the paper clutched oddly in her hand. “A woman will answer the phone. Do not say anything to her except the following words: ‘I’ve been a naughty boy and I deserved to be punished’. Do you understand?”

Yana’s brow furrows in confusion. “What -”

“Don’t ask questions, just say you understand. Repeat the words.”

She does so, slowly. “I’ve been a naughty boy and I deserve to be punished.”

“Good. Once you do so, she will ask you some questions. Tell her everything. Tell her what you’ve done, tell her where you are, and tell her that a man who speaks good but not perfect Bulgarian gave you this number and said that she would help you.” He pauses. “She _will_ help you. She’ll teach you how to survive. She’ll teach you how to control those who would seek to control you.” 

You’ll be the one holding the whip, he thinks.

When Yana leaves he stands alone in the kitchen. It will be tomorrow before someone from the SIC comes to look for Mihael; Anton will assume that he went alone to exchange the memory stick, will only hear of his failure to appear late in the evening, will call his phone and assume he is being petulant when he receives no answer. He won’t come directly, he’s too arrogant to interrupt his schedule, but when Mihael fails to appear at the usual time for their morning meeting he’ll send someone along to check the flat.

Stefan will be long gone by then, the ghost of a man who never existed in the first place.

Sherlock fishes his current throw-away mobile from his pocket and dials another number from memory. There is a few seconds of ringing – he rolls his eyes – before it’s answered.

“Hello, brother dear.”

Mycroft is slightly out of breath, obviously having been caught in the midst of jogging on that ridiculous treadmill, must have his eye on one of the newest Brioni numbers and has delusions of maintaining the same waist size when his tailor comes to call.

“I have it,” Sherlock says.

“Excellent,” Mycroft says, his tone like a cat who is waking from a languid nap in the sun. “I’ll alert the local extraction team. Where can they pick you up?”

Sherlock rattles off the details of the _Gotse Delchev_ location. He imagines he is probably giving away all sorts of things in so few words, divulging the sordid details of the last few weeks to his older brother in the numbers and letters. Can he tell that Sherlock was high not an hour ago? Can he tell that his skin feels as thought it’s stretched too thin, like his bones are too big and he hates, hates, _hates_ this person-suit he’s wearing? How he wants to go home?

“They’ll be there in a half hour.”

“Fine.”

“Before you go,” Mycroft says, “I wonder if you might like an update?”

He doesn’t need to give more detail than that.

Sherlock would normally have hung up by now but something – the same something that prods at sores and picks at itchy scabs – hesitates. Mycroft takes this as his unspoken assent.

“The Yard has a successfully executed a raid on a nightclub where a patron was suspected of supplying the visitors with methylenedioxymethamphetamine. He was quite an entrepreneur, but as they say, flew a bit too close to the sun and sold to a young woman who had an undiagnosed heart condition. Lestrade managed to solve the case all by himself and identified the nightclub owner as the one who was supplying the drugs, in a rather surprising turn of events. He’s been the feature on nighttime telly this entire week.

“Ms Hudson, meanwhile, has found an unlikely acquaintance in a man from a Matures Singles Social she attended several weeks ago. He’s been taking her to tea and I believe even brought her flowers on Wednesday before last. And before you interrupt, brother mine, I am monitoring the situation and should the need arise, I am prepared to step in and confirm his intentions are honourable. Though from my observation this isn’t warranted. He seems a…pleasant enough fellow.” 

Mycroft falls silent. He won’t offer what he knows Sherlock really wants.

Sherlock will need to ask.

He – he can’t.

He hangs up.

He clutches the mobile hard enough to dig deep grooves into the palm of his hand before he systematically dismantles it and throws it in the garbage. He turns the television down but not off before he leaves, and wishes fervently for a collared coat to cover his shoulders as waits for Mycroft’s men to pick him up and take him to the rendezvous in Kostinbrod.

As the Sofia sun begins to set, a man stands outside a flat in _zhk Gotse Delchev_ and smokes a cigarette.

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for:  
> \- Threats of sexualized violence/sexual assault: Original characters are referred to as having been previously assaulted and one of the characters is a creepy perv to Sherlock  
> \- Violence: Discussions of murder and how to do it. Sherlock gives an original character tips on how to commit a murder and then observes the corpse in the aftermath (it is the character's abuser, though, so we don't feel too badly about him being killed)  
> \- Drug use: Sherlock is high on cocaine for the majority of this fic
> 
> Feedback is greatly appreciated!


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